Analyzing location-based accessibility to dental services: An Ohio case study

Oral health is important to overall health. Therefore, dental services should be available and accessible in order for patients to receive care. Objective: This study aims to identify regional inequities in dental provider location and suggest an innovative methodology that could be useful in establishing new dental facilities that are geographically accessible. Methods: Using a census of dentist locations for the state of Ohio in 1998, geographical accessibility to dental care was analyzed. A geographic information systems (GIS)-based model to evaluate the regional distribution of dentists was developed. In this article, it is applied to estimate the number of new dental facilities needed based on the geographical proximity or distance to nearest dentist or dental facility. Results are interactively displayed and mapped with GIS for visualization. Results: Four hundred thirteen of 1, 008 zip codes in Ohio did not have dentists. Using a service standard of S = 5 (all zip codes without dentists must be within 5 miles of a zip code with a dentist), 307 zip codes were not served by dentists. With a standard of S = 10, only 45 zip codes in Ohio were not served by dentists, with only 24 additional offices needed to be located to allow accessibility to a dentist within 10 miles. Conclusions: Using GIS and geographical techniques to reveal and solve the potential locational inequities in accessibility to dental care, this work links oral health policy with geographical techniques.